Sunday, February 8, 2015

Yesterday was the Cast Iron Classic at Synergy Strength. This event was so unique! I have to say, reflecting on the day, it may have been one of my favorite competitions I've ever taken part in.

I haven't competed in nearly two years and there are a couple reasons for that. The first is I have a very competitive mindset; as much as I used to love competing, because of my innate competitive nature, I often found it to be emotionally draining. Competition is amazing for pushing people to their absolute best and driving them to do things they've never done before; this self-discovery is something I have always adored about competing. However, there was always a flipside of that for me... I used to often fall prey to the evil green monster of comparison. One of the most beautiful things about the CrossFit community is the tendency to cheer on individual successes, whether huge or seemingly small. I always found competitions to be amazing for magnifying these successes... however, many times I found myself walking out of competitions having seen incredible things and wishing I could do more and be more. This was good in that it pushed me to work harder, but also less than ideal as it often stopped me from appreciating how far I had truly come.

My solution? I took a break from competing for a little while. This was actually a really natural progression for me because things with school (and now my career) had to take the spotlight. In this time, I put my focus on finding a healthy work/gym/life balance. This has been my story for the last couple of years, and I've been really happy. I'm finally starting to find balance and life is treating me well. I'm realizing I can't be a rockstar in every area of my life... I can just be the best version of me - and I'm happy to say I'm finding a lot of joy and freedom in that. No pressure, no comparison... just me.

When Alex approached me about joining him on a team for the CIC competition, it seemed like the perfect time. My head is finally where I want it to be and I was ready to have a little bit of fun. I wound up on a team with three amazing people who have never competed before... this was perfect for me. It was a pressure off situation where we were all going in just to throw down our best and forget about the competition element of the day. We named ourselves #YOLO, because really, you only live once and you may as well have some fun and do some crazy stuff while you're here!

Leading up to the event, we practiced a lot of the workouts and kept each other updated on how things were going. We knew, going into the competition, the rough numbers we were hoping to hit and the goals we wanted to attack. It was quite incredible to see, as each race went by, how each one of us SMASHED what we thought we were capable of. I'm so proud of each one of them, I can't even tell you. Michael completed "Fran" in under 6 minutes (21-15-9 of thrusters and pull-ups), Alex pumped out 23 ridiculously heavy clean and jerks (with an injury... he still did over 10 more reps than he managed in practice!), Shelby CRUSHED the thrusters in the last event (yes, the girl who only started doing thrusters two weeks ago!!! Oh, and did I mention those thrusters she was doing for REPS were 10 pounds under her personal best 1 rep max thruster??), and I had a moment of awesomeness as I shaved off nearly a minute from my "Isobel" time, completing 30 snatches in 1:57. The individual successes on our team were HUGE, and that's what made the day incredible. It wasn't our standings that mattered to us... we knew, no matter what, we would be top 40 - and guess what, we were! ;)

I have so many favorite parts of the day because I allowed myself to fully appreciate what our team could do. Yesterday really put the fun back into competitions for me - I might just have to get myself back into the swing of things. If time doesn't allow that for me though, you can count on me being back to compete in next year's CIC. No question!!

Cheers to Synergy for putting on such an incredible event. I had a blast! To my team - I'm so proud of each of you. You all went in nervous and you came out victorious. You. Are. Champions!